Drifting Off
by MagicalMysteryPhantom
Summary: Alternate title-'Probably. Maybe.' Spoilers for Endgame trailer. And Infinity War, I guess. "He's going insane. He's known madness before, in another life almost, so he recognizes the signs. At other times, though, there was someone to pull him out. Now, there's no one. Probably. Maybe." Or, Tony Stark goes insane while drifting in space.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Angsty writing exercise. Please enjoy! I do not own The Avengers.**

* * *

He's going insane.

He's known madness before, in another life almost, so he recognizes the signs. At other times, though, there was someone to pull him out. Now, there's no one.

Probably. Maybe.

There are voices, occasionally. Pieces of something not human. Pieces of human not something. Faces breaking and breaking face. People he (maybe?) knows missing things, like a puzzle was started then put back in the box.

People he thinks shouldn't be here trying to grab his hand. Trying to talk to him. Laughing at him. Crying over him. He ignores them.

It's getting harder to ignore them.

* * *

On a particularly sane bout, he rigs a communication device and sends a message.

He tries to tell her what happened. He tries to say that they (who's they? Isn't it only him?) left Titan eight days ago. He tries to say that only one day into the journey, the water supply was found to have a leak. That only four days into the journey, all the water had leaked out. Only five days into their journey, the ship, already traveling at a crawl, broke down—and with it, the air filter. That they are living on emergency oxygen. That unless he or she (wait—she?) manages to repair the ship, the oxygen will run out tomorrow.

But he doesn't say that. Probably. Maybe. More importantly, he tells her he loves her. He promises to think of her when the madness leaves. When he finally sleeps.

Every word he says echoes around his head and distorts. He stops recording the message and tries to figure out how he was planning on making sense of the strange words he was about to say.

As he forgets what he's spoken into the helmet, he wonders at the words spinning in his head, like a whirlpool is gathering phrases in the calm waters of his mind and spitting them, battered, into his mouth. He doesn't know what they mean. He doesn't know why he says them.

"There was no other way," he says, feeling the strange way the words fly from his tongue and bounce off his teeth before hanging, dripping, in the air. In time they completely melt away, and he says the next phrase the whirlpool has brought to his lips.

"I don't wanna go." The words are sharp and small and blacker than the sky outside the window. He realizes that, while never having said them, the words are his. As he stares at them, they take a slightly red sheen, and he says them again, wondering if the red will tingle on his tongue like it looks like it will.

"I don't wanna go."

The phrase is spicy, and smarts his eyes, and burns his nose, and he wonders how those four words—_first person pronoun, contraction, improper contraction, verb_—could elicit so much pain.

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**So, yeah. There will maybe be a second chapter. Thank you for reading!**


	2. Chapter 2

He thinks maybe he's known a Before. Not drifting.

Drifting is the only word for this. He thinks maybe it's life, but life is . . . living. But—if this isn't living, then . . . what is?

Before, he decides. Before was living. Probably. Maybe.

He thinks of Now as an ablive. Not living. And the After? He thinks of it as sleep. He has no reason to believe that the ablive that is Now will ever end. Living had an end, though. Ablive probably will too, and after Now is over, he wants something else. He wants After to be different. Peaceful. Now is itchy. Deep, deep down, Now itches. Now pulls at the back of his brain. Now runs its fingers along the inside of his spine. Now makes After feel very far away.

Before, he thinks, was nicer. He . . . he's not sure, but he doesn't believe that he wanted Before to end. Something. . . .

Something got left behind. Or taken. He doesn't know what. He can't think of anything that has ever been taken from him—except for Before, of course. But the more he tries to remember Before, to find what's missing, the more Now itches.

He tries to forget living. Before will never come back.

* * *

He can see stars. Outside the window. Huge incorporeal gatherings of neon gas. Chalk marks so small that he knows if he could stretch his hand out the window, he would be able to smudge and smear them along the blackboard of the sky with his thumb. He reaches, and his fingertips meet the glass he'd forgotten exists.

He rasps out a laugh.

* * *

There's movement out of the corner of his eye. He refuses to look. It's not real. Probably. Maybe.

Actually, he doesn't know what's real anymore. If anything is. Maybe Before didn't exist. Doesn't exist. Won't exist.

All he's certain exists is Now. Even space, even the window, might not be real. But Now is. Now is inside of him. Outside of inside can't be trusted. So, he decides, nothing that he can see is confirmed to be real.

Which is why, when he sees a face in the window, he doesn't believe in it. A stubbly, ragged beard. Eyes pulsating yellow fear. Hair damp with years or rain from its forehead.

The first time he saw the face, he was a believer. He yelled and pounded on the window. He cowered away. He invited it in.

Now he's certain the face doesn't exist, so when he see it, he doesn't look long. The eyes are now blossoming orange clouds. He thinks maybe his are too, so he looks away and pretends he didn't see it and forgets.

* * *

He's started breathing differently. The air is halved, so he tries to breathe in half. He thinks maybe it works. Why hasn't he been half-breathing this whole time?

It makes him tired, though. Now is restless in his stomach. Rolling on its side and scraping its hands down his throat. He suddenly wants _so badly_ to just sleep, but Now won't let him.

So he does what he doesn't want too. He looks at the face in the window, and pretends he can't see the orange clouds, and imagines that the eyes are red and gold behind the mist.

Sometimes there's another face. Blue, with purple and black Christmas lights framing it and one eye a comforting abyss. If he stares at the eye long enough, in its depths he can see a red-haired woman, whom he thinks he might have seen in the star second-closest to the window. She seems nice, and if he squints, he can see green flowers sprouting from her ears. The green flowers make him sad. It must be painful to have flowers in your ears. He feels sorry for her, even though he doesn't know her. Probably. Maybe.

He thinks about her, even when he turns away from the faces in the window. Thinking about her settles the roaring beast of Now. He feels his legs blur. They can't hold him up.

He falls. The last thing he sees is a sad smile on the face of that strange, beautiful woman with the green flowers in her ears growing ever larger and turning grey.

He smiles. Such a beautiful thing to see before sleep.

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**A/N: Well, that's it. I've an idea for a third chapter, but I dunno. Hope you enjoyed. Thank you for reading.**


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